Introduction

Hi yes hello!

Today we're going to be painting abandoned spaces and i'll go through with you step by step on how to approach a really complex task as this!

As daunting it may be starting this, this tutorial will help with exactly just that!

Basics

If you can draw a square, triangle and circle you're already a quarter way there!

If you can draw a cube, pyramid and sphere then we're now half way!

It'll all make sense soon, these primitive shapes are the core building blocks to any piece, landscape or portrait.

Now imagine some munched on these shapes with their teeth, it already gives the feeling that its a broken building or object

Basics II

First we'll do the same cube, but we're going to translate a ruined or worn down piece of stone to it. Draw the cube with teeth that bit into it and hit the base colors of the stone.

 

As we can see, stone is usually lighter on the inside when broken apart hence the lighter base color.

We'll have some zig zag shapes to indicate the broken down stone and have a top down lighting since thats very simple, the two lower faces not being hit by light will naturally be darker as light can't reach it as easily

Looking at the stone texture, the bricks look like mismatched tetris blocks so we rough that in immediately!

When Im studying a material I like to squint my eyes very much, you will see some shapes stand out even though your vision is blurred. I highlighted the photo in red to show what i saw when i squinted.

 

They look like jagged random tetris pieces, so I throw in the pattern onto painting to display the highlights of the stone and vice versa for the shadow.

Squinting method

Here we have a church bench straight from google image search.

We'll use the squint method again but i'll show it more in detail this time

With this blurred image

This is roughly what I see myself when I squint, you'll be able to find material pattern much easier this way.

Once you find a recurring pattern, it doesn't have to be the most accurate or detailed job at all, just rough strokes to indicate the shape and it'll seem like wood!

Thumbnailing

Now its time to find an idea for what we want illustrated.

Thumbnailing is a perfect method for brainstorming ideas on what our illustration will be like.

Stick to the 3 primitive shapes previously to get your idea across, we tend to focus too much on detail too early before getting a solid idea that works well compositionally.

 

Get experimental, go nuts with how big or long shapes will be!

Elongated rectangles coming towards the camera, could be giant towers just looming over you.

 

Play with the perspective of these shapes [ you dont need perspective grids ]

Just have fun and make the shapes go nuts and have blobs to indicate that its a person or being, this further emphasises scale.

These are some ideas I came up with quickly with the bitten primitive shapes, have these broken primitive shapes already give us a feeling that these buildings have not been touched for a long time.

 

Try not to render them but focusing on just 3 values to get what your brain is thinking to the canvas which is Shadow, Base color and lights!

 

 

Heres a thumbnail that i had alot of fun with just 3 values, theres no detail just blobs of shadow, base and light.

 

 

I liked this thumbnail in particular because it looked like some sort of spiritual priest going through an abandoned church, keeping watch of the spirits that lie in the untouched ground.

Illustration

1. Select a thumbnail you like

2. Lower the opacity to 50% then make a new layer to place details roughly, you may be clean or messy depending on your style, I prefer to be messy

3. Add in your base colors under the lineart. We're going to do something cool that will blend our colors and save us tonnes of time!

 

Select your LINEART layer and make it a reference layer, through the icon highlighted in red.

1. Select your BASE COLOR layer and click Edit > Colorize > Advanced > press ok.

The result should look similar to what is shown, all that happened in less than 30 seconds its such a nice blend.

 

2. After colorizing it'll turn off your BASE COLOR layer and create an entirely new layer which is multiply. Most people don't turn their base color layer back on as they usually use colorize with a few dots of paint.

 

But by fully coloring with your base layers and turning it back on at around 50% you get a blend of smooth colors and keep your brush strokes which is the best of both worlds!

 

3. I used an overlay of light orange to establish the lighting in my scene which is this lamp

1. I rendered in some details, remember the squinting method!

I applied the pattern i learned from the church benches and repeated it against the chairs and added some rougher cracks to show its age.

 

2. I placed more details slightly on the ghosts, i wanted them faceless but thought it'd be cool to have them show their bones a tiny bit.

 

3. I soft air brushed an OVERLAY layer of teal/cyan on the ghosts to make them pop more

And did the pattern we learned today all over the piece like light is reflecting from the ghosts.

1. Overlay the ghosts again to make them glow

 

2. I merged the whole image together and gaussian blurred and removed what i wanted to be seen more.

 

3. I love to air brush saturation on the saturation blend mode as it gives off cool and funky colors, now we're done!

Summary

• Stick to primitive shapes when looking for an idea, everything is less scary when its simplified

tackling backgrounds or abandoned places will be much more easier after!

 

• Squint at photos to get the graphic shape of the material

 

• Simply have fun with it!

 

 

You can follow me on

Instagram/Twitter @Lunaticmoonart

 

I hope you learned something, do show me what you made with this tutorial anytime

I'd love to see!